The way to provide this is a function called from within your statusline. Add the following lines to your vimrc and modify as you prefer. I run unix, but this can be slightly altered for other platforms too. If you are on the mac or dos platforms, simply substitute unix for your platform name in the fuction. function ShowFileFormatFlag(var) if ( a:var == 'dos' ) return '[dos]' elseif ( a:var == 'mac' ) return '[mac]' else return '' endif endfunction hi User1 term=bold cterm=bold ctermfg=red ctermbg=darkblue %1*%{ShowFileFormatFlag(&fileformat)}%*